Broadway musicals are one of America’s most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation?
The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to The Scottsboro Boys (2011). Musicals mirror their time periods and reflect the political and social issues of their day. Warren Hoffman investigates the thematic content of the Broadway musical and considers how musicals work on a structural level, allowing them to simultaneously present and hide their racial agendas in plain view of their audiences. While the musical is informed by the cultural contributions of African Americans and Jewish immigrants, Hoffman argues that ultimately the history of the American musical is the history of white identity in the United States.
Presented chronologically, The Great White Way shows how perceptions of race altered over time and how musicals dealt with those changes. Hoffman focuses first on shows leading up to and comprising the Golden Age of Broadway (1927-1960s), then turns his attention to the revivals and nostalgic vehicles that defined the final quarter of the twentieth century. He offers entirely new and surprising takes on shows from the American musical canon—Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), Annie Get YourGun (1946), The Music Man (1957), West Side Story (1957), A Chorus Line (1975), and 42nd Street (1980), among others.
New archival research on the creators who produced and wrote these shows, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Kleban, will have theater fans and scholars rethinking forever how they view this popular American entertainment.
Second Edition, New edition, Second Edition, New edition
Pages:
302
Product dimensions:
6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:
16 - 18 Years
About the Author
WARREN HOFFMAN, PhD, is the author of The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture. He has worked professionally in the theater for more than ten years as a program director, producer, theater critic, and playwright.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface to the Second Edition Overture: All Singin’! All Dancin’! All White People? Act One: 1927-1957 1 Only Make Believe: Performing Race in Show Boat 2 Playing Cowboys and Indians: Forging Whiteness in Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun 3 Trouble in New York City: The Racial Politics of West Side Story and The Music Man Act Two: 1967-2019 4 Carbon Copies: Black and Interracial Productions of White Musicals 5 A Chorus Line: The Benetton of Broadway Musicals 6 Everything Old Is New Again: Nostalgia and the Broadway Musical at the End of the Twentieth Century 7 Blockbuster Musicals in the Age of Obama: The Book of Mormon and Hamilton Exit Music Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Permissions Index
